ms crankypants

I’ll start with the droll police officer before touching lightly on the fuckwittery of some people. A news article this week in Sydney featured hoon drivers having their confiscated cars returned early, simply by having their mothers pretend the supercharged boganmobiles belong to them.

Mumsy faces court, tells a sob story of hardship without ‘her’ hotted-up Commodore and collects the car in time for the next weekend’s illegal street drags. Some claim manual vehicles and cannot drive a car with a gear stick.

The superintendant also said, “A lot are registered in their parents’ names, a mother doesn’t drive around in a car with personalised plates that uses nitrous oxide and is supercharged.”

“Mum and dad are saying they’re our cars and asking they be returned. Mum says it is her car and she needs it.”

A member of the Police Association said, “I’ve seen mums turn up to get a car back, even hotted-up GTRs.”

A reality TV show with cops commentating and scoring mothers’ bullshit excuses in front of the magistrate would be piss-funny if it weren’t so serious.

If I had kids, I’d be a hard-arsed unpopular bitch because I’d make my children take responsibility for their actions. Break the law, stiff shit. Have to walk to work, wear comfortable shoes. Too far to walk, buy a bus ticket and shut the hell up. I have a family member who lost his licence for drink driving, has been busted again during his suspension period and is hiding from the police rather than face another court appearance. I have no tolerance for those who cannot fit into society’s simple laws of avoiding behaviour that might kill others.

Here in Victoria, police are mapping road fatalities as a visual reminder that more than 250 people have lost their lives in vehicle accidents this year. Unfortunately it’s a small state with a lot of deaths and there’s no room to include serious injuries and incapacities as a result of accidents.

Source: www.theage.com.au

In my delusional, utopian world where people understand the meaning of accountability, I wonder if the hoon mums will ever get the logic of why their kids’ cars were confiscated.

Crank-o-meter: shitty

October 31st, 2008 | Tags: crime, human behaviour | Category: crime, human behaviour | Comments (4)

Crankyville is a smallish hamlet divided in two by a busy road for those who work in the north and live in the south. On my side of the busy road is a ramshackle shopping strip with a few professional suites, a mixed business, café and cake place, an empty shell where the greengrocer used to be, an absurd number of real estate agencies and a bakery that’s expanded to fill two shopfronts.

This is a good bakery with a pastry chef who makes a custard tart worth selling an organ for. Sorry, was a good bakery. I got the shits up when a bloody huge-arsed, chrome-accessorised, steam-frothing monstrosity of a coffee machine was installed. It takes fucking half the day now to buy a loaf of bread because as soon as one person wants a chai latte with skinny milk and just a bit of chocolate, no not that much can you make it again, the queue for the daily bread is 14 miles long.

I cracked a sad and meandered into the mixed business to buy the newspaper and a loaf of bread because the shop is stocked with the bakery’s loaves. Bugger me dead, the new owners have plonked a shiny red enamel and metal coffee machine next to the cash register. It’s a fucking milk bar, sell milk and papers and a pre-made sandwich if you must, but can I go somewhere without having to wait for the sole employee to labour over a tray of flat whites for the local tradies on their way to a job?

Today a new bakery has opened amid gossip about how the owners will compete with the place across the road. I got a tad excited when I saw a Vietnamese couple tizzing the place up because my greedy little brain conjured thoughts of racks and racks of tantalising sweet buns and French-inspired pastries. I went in this morning and, nup, the usual white and wholemeal bread and a fucking brown and chrome coffee machine sitting next to the cash register. I gave up waiting for the customer in front of me to give a blow-by-blow monologue on how she wanted her macchifuckingato made. The owners will just have to get used to the locals screaming and running away in frustration.

Buy a coffee machine, employ more staff. I’m hungry.

Crank-o-meter: crusty

October 29th, 2008 | Tags: food, shittypants | Category: food, shittypants | Comments (6)

I have a crush on Italian judges who have taken the naming of babies into their own hands.

The judges deemed the naming of a couple’s son as “ridiculous” and ordered that baby Venerdi (”Friday” in Italian) be renamed Gregorio, after the saint of his day of birth. The name Venerdi was also associated with “inferiority and subservience,” according to the judges.

The couple hasn’t learned and wants to name its next child Mercoledie (”Wednesday” in Italian). The news story didn’t mention if the parents would do this regardless of gender or if the little one was born on any of the other six days of the week.

I am supportive of this bossy style of democracy because I don’t know what happened between 15 and 20 years ago when many in my age group started flicking out the kidlets. The current crop of teens and young adults have a disproportionately high number of bog-weird names in a backlash to the relatively plain names my generation was given.

If I were qualified to practice law, my banned name list would include:

• Naming non-American kids after American places, such as Madison
• Misspellings of American places, including Madisson and Maddison and Maddisson and you get the picture
• I was going to add ‘unless the child was conceived in that state’, but kids are traumatised enough when they learn their parents have sex, let alone have the story endlessly repeated about how the child got the name. “Yeahhhh, three bottles of tequila and some drunken messy rooting in the back of a hire car and that’s how little Mexico got her name.”
• Stupidly-spelled variations of common names, such as Katreena, Keylie, Raymon, and every other eye-straining combination that crops up in the local rag’s birth notices. Lately I’ve seen Triona, Alieshia, Melcome, Daron, Christel, Khyle, Kael and Krystyan and these are all banned for the next thousand years
• And naming a human after a type of animal is herewith forbidden. When the Cruise child was named Suri, I immediately called my mother to confirm that alpacas fall into two types: Huacaya are the fluffy ones and Suri are the ones with silken dreadlocks. Who can take a woman named after an alpaca seriously?

I am a benevolent democracy and on my to-be supported list are:

• Authentic and impossible-to-guess-the-pronunciation Welsh names
• Wolfgang has always been a favourite so that’s in, like it or not
• Polish names without vowels are cool, too
• Old names such as Gladys, Olive and Christian are always in

My jury is currently deliberating babies named after celebrities of the day. In 20 years how many of today’s pre-schooler Brads will meet and marry Angelinas, I ask.

Crank-o-meter: impressed with my fairness but I won’t wear a horsehair wig 

October 27th, 2008 | Tags: human behaviour | Category: human behaviour | Comments (10)

Management at Changi Airport is concerned about losing the title of world’s best airport to Hong Kong, and has a put new program in place to make it all better again.

It’s exactly what I’d do if I were in charge of an artificial environment filled with grumpy and jetlagged passengers who aren’t in the mood for a lubeless anal probe from customs and just want to get the hell to their shore destinations: hire clapped-out celebrities to welcome arrivals.

Tommy Lee has signed a contract as a meeter-and-greeter (oh, OK, I wouldn’t mind if good Tommy was waiting for me at international arrivals).

Source: www.peta2.com

Bad Tommy? I’d be running backwards towards the plane and making sure it was winging me pronto to a presumably non-meet and greet country like Tajikistan.

 

Source: www.superstarcouples.com

 

 

Another Mötley Crüe-er, Vince Neil, has also signed up to scare the fuck out of visitors to Singapore. The man’s had so many facelifts that tourists wouldn’t know if he was coming or going, or greeting people behind or in front of him. Kind of like a Dalek, but harsher on the eyes.

 

Source: www.acountry.com

 

 

I’m curious to find out other ‘celebrities’ who have jumped on board. I’d get on a plane tomorrow if any British period drama actor of the last decade has signed up, but I suspect with my unfortunate luck I’d be escorted through quarantine by Billy Bloody Idol.

Crank-o-meter: even more scared of flying

October 25th, 2008 | Tags: marketing, really daft ideas | Category: marketing, really daft ideas | Comments (5)

I’m a bit brain-foggy from a mysterious sleep drought, so until my mojo comes back, here’s librarytart, a new blog I’ve been working on. I have a mission to read the books from A to Z in my local library [1].

It could be fun as I’ll use the magic 8 ball to decide when to change to the next letter [2].

[1] Not all the books, as I have realised there are too many and I’m tiring of A already.
[2] Most of my life decisions are made with the toss of a coin, but a magic 8 ball is good for handling direct questions, if a bit wishy-washy sometimes.

 Crank-o-meter: writing the little book of not sleeping

October 23rd, 2008 | Tags: beautiful books, not cranky, shameless self promotion | Category: beautiful books, not cranky, shameless self promotion | Comments (4)

The garish ropes of tinsel and plastic Santa-ghoul decorations … I can almost cope with. The green and red-dyed candy cane rawhide chews in the dog food aisle for our canine buddies … I can’t really cope with, but I do say a little prayer that no one buys that shit for their animals. The e-mail advertising the work Christmas party … hit delete and hope like hell the sender didn’t read receipt the recipients.

I like most of my co-workers and work productively with all of them, but come late October, the never-fucking-happy, could-do-it-better-but-that-would-mean-an-end-to-the-bitchin’ people come out of their cubicles and don’t shut up about how crappy it’s all going to be and don’t know why anyone bothers.

I know why: one year we went on a boat ride and one year in the future, any year, and I will wait … we’ll go on another boat ride and I’m going to push every single nay-sayer into the deep blue sea where the sharks take their lunch. Plonk, kerplunk, plonk. Sometimes I channel that fantasy and it keeps me going during business hours.

The optimistic but doomed ‘volunteer’ (“You’re good at organising things, you’ll be great,” was her manager’s delegation) has no chance of survival, regardless of the inclusive e-mail she sent asking for suggestions, and the top seven or so she sent us to vote on. The expensive options and evening events died in the arse and we agreed on a local winery that has a most reasonable fixed price menu with a variety of good wines by the glass.

Then it started (our bitchin’ brigade hides in the bushes until a decision is announced and then launches like a fully-loaded M60 machine gun with endless links of ammo stuffed in).

“Yewwwww, I don’t drink wine.”

“Errkkkk, I had lunch there once 15,000 years ago and I didn’t like the entrée.”

“Awww, It’s not in the direction of my house if I want to piss off early from you lot and go straight home.”

“Arghhh, Why aren’t we going on the boat ride?” (because you whinged when I organised that one, fucker)

“Nooo, I want to go to a pub and have a bowl of chips.”

It’s like a stadium rendition of Waldorf and Statler from The Muppets, but not funny and devoid of all wit. I can’t turn the channel over and the glares I receive are bloody annoying when I tell them not to go and enjoy the sandwiches at their desks.

Crank-o-meter: I’m going!

October 21st, 2008 | Tags: human behaviour, work | Category: human behaviour, work | Comments (6)

The hounds failed in their duty to give early warning of a door-to-door salesperson yesterday and I ended up having to answer the door. They would have been sent to bed without dinner if they didn’t raid the bin anyway.

For once, the visitor was sent by the electricity company I use (I am still an old-fashioned supporter of government-owned utilities, if for the only reason that it reduces the number of salespeople from myriad competitors with increasingly complex deals and promises … but only if they can see my last bill … and only if I sign on the line today … and yes, I can cancel later and return to my old provider if I’m not happy – who the fuck’s got time for that? It took a year to cancel an internet service I never took up because my three cancellation calls weren’t logged on the system).

The rep outside my screen door wanted to reward me for being a customer. The company loses customers after being waved gifts from competitors so this mob was getting in early and rewarding me for being loyal. Me! He flashed the laminated card with photos of choices including a shower head and some other shit I already have but I still prepared to make my selection. I was so excited I even got my bill for him without being asked. See, I am a customer! I’ll even open this locked screen door to grab the freebie out of your hand and not break your wrist when I close it!

But, like all gift horses, there was a catch. I had to change my electricity plan to 20% ‘green’ energy (right there and then, of course), but the upside was that it wouldn’t cost me any more than 100% coal-powered energy.

I scratched my head and showed him the section of the bill confirming I subscribe to 100% wind power.

He said I was able to unsubscribe from 100% green and switch to the 20% green plan and I’d receive my gift. I, in fact, didn’t have to be on 100% green power because did I realise I was paying more for it?

I replied that I had chosen wind power and pay more because I feel it’s one of my civic responsibilities and I’m fortunate enough to afford it (and, by crikey, it makes me use less energy). Do I still get my piece of free crap?

“No. Only if you switch to our 20% green. Would you like to sign up?”

I said no, we shook our heads at each other in disbelief and walked away from the aborted transaction.

In the meantime, landholders outside Ballarat are divided on a company’s plan to build Victoria’s largest wind farm with 282 turbines. People offered and accepting financial deals to have turbines on their land are in favour, while almost everyone else is in the negative, citing the usual reasons of ugliness and saving the birds.

There are few things uglier than open cut mines and coal-powered electricity plants, and most people, when pressed about which birds on what migratory paths are at risk, can’t answer because they are parrots repeating neighbours’ angry vitriol as unassailable fact. The State Government is possibly being moronic in this instance by not insisting on the usual environmental impact studies, so no one knows if any or what birds might be munched up by 846 spinning blades. Ignorance all round.

Vote 1: wind if it’s studied, sensible and sustainable.

Crank-o-meter: another reason the planet is fucked

October 19th, 2008 | Tags: environment, marketing | Category: environment, marketing | Comments (4)

The people at Fairfax respect Layne Beachley almost as much as I do, and have given her blog space to write about motivation, health and success. Here’s the intro blurb:

Regarded as history’s best female surfer, Layne Beachley is a seven-time world champion. But her drive doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. She’s had success with her Beachley Athletic and in 2006, Layne staged the richest event in women’s surfing. Recently retired, Layne has turned her focus to investing in Australia’s future by inspiring young women to realise their full potential with her Aim For The Stars Foundation.

Being the minority gender in any vocation and regarded with (even unintentional) condescension rankles. Do not get me started on the media’s novelty value treatment of stories about male prostitutes, female engineers, male nurses, female politicians and male models. We in reader-land can determine people’s genders from names and pronouns because most of us aren’t brain-dead stupid.

I tried to surf and gurgled a lot of saltwater with the starfish on the ocean floor. She’s one of history’s best surfers, comma, and continue.

PS: the moderators let my comment through! (spewing I used ‘achieve’ twice in the same sentence)

Crank-o-meter: bitttttttttter and cranky

October 17th, 2008 | Tags: feminism, media | Category: feminism, media | Comments (3)

I’m sorry I’m not a barrel of monkeys at the moment. I have been trying to post something smile-worthy but I’m about as funny as an eggy fart during a job interview (and that’s seriously not funny because I ate chilli beans the night before my last interview and concentrating on positive body language was madness).

Between all the time wasting and worthless crap at work, I have had time to shut my mouth, open my eyes and see how much we know about our workmates without discussing their private lives.

Mr A has a high level of responsibility and drinks several bottles of wine in a sitting most weeknights so he can cope with work (he does, but there’s no way of concealing the odour of alcohol leaching through the body’s pores). Mr B only works because he owes the government about two years’ salary for claiming carer’s benefits for a family member he never cared for. Mrs C and Mrs D refuse to work in the same building and threaten to hurt each other because Mr C and Mrs D became physically involved without Mrs C’s knowledge and consent. Mr E hides several court appearances because of alcohol-fuelled violence and undertakes his community service on weekends.

Usually the peccadilloes of people’s lives are not a bother because they are adults and as long as the job gets done.

Mrs F’s story is more complex. She has a pattern of unscheduled absences from work at least every second week, always on a Monday. She suffers migraines and a sore back according to the leave forms approved by her manager. A couple of black eyes and reddened cheekbones were the result of clumsiness around the house; nothing could be wrong because she was able to come to the office on those Mondays and churn through her work like a champion. Bruised ribs were easy to conceal under clothes but made manoeuvring around the office difficult, but hey, the job got done and she said she was all right.

She doesn’t ask for help and doesn’t confide in her peers. She’s an adult and can make her own decisions. Her children have left home so there are no innocent victims who require immediate intervention. But what if she is dying inside and waiting for someone to notice and take her aside? People often don’t open cans of worms because of what might escape but it’s difficult to not interfere. What to do?

Crank-o-meter: no idea

October 15th, 2008 | Tags: human behaviour | Category: human behaviour | Comments (5)